


Purification

by quantumvelvet



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Type: Dark Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:42:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25412578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quantumvelvet/pseuds/quantumvelvet
Summary: Years after they parted ways in Redcliffe, Amell tracks Jowan down to ask a dangerous favour involving his old skillset.
Relationships: Amell & Jowan (Dragon Age)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	Purification

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ziskandra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ziskandra/gifts).



The sound of a fist banging on the door to his shop is enough to jolt Jowan from his sleep, pleasant dreams of summer sun and maiden's hands shredding apart beneath the rapid thrum of his heart and the howl of the winter storm past his windows. He waits, breath caught in his throat out of old habit – stay still, stay silent, and perhaps the Templars' attention will pass on by – hoping that whoever it is will continue on their way. Visitors past midnight never bode well, and he's long since learned that keeping his head down is the best way to keep out of trouble.

The banging comes again, louder this time, as though his unwanted visitor is attempting to batter down the door through sheer force. Which is entirely possible, given that the same things that drew him initially to Little Llomerryn – the absence of a Circle and the fact that it falls under the laws of no land – mean cutthroats are to the town what dogs are to Ferelden, ubiquitous, loud, foul-smelling, and difficult to manage.

With a sigh, he heaves himself out of bed and throws on the previous day's robes, still stained and acrid-smelling from an experiment gone wrong. An apothecary's potions are _not_ , apparently, as simple as he'd once thought, and even after several years spent brewing poultices for pirates, raiders, and other unsavoury individuals, he still has the occasional mishap when he attempts to deviate from the tried and tested recipes.

Jowan trudges down from the small apartment above the rented shop, cursing as he barks his shin on one of the low cabinets holding dried ingredients, all far too old to be used as anything but display and thief-bait. (Perhaps it's not particularly kind of him, but he finds it difficult to care if some fool poisons himself attempting to dodge the bill.) He struggles with the locks on the front door for a moment or two, then pulls the door open a scant few inches. “I'm closed. Come--”

That's as far as he gets before the cowled figure outside puts their shoulder to the door and shoves it out of his grip, bulling past him into the shop.

“Andraste's tits, I swear if you tell me to come back tomorrow, I'll shove a lightning bolt so far up your ass your eyes will shoot sparks,” a voice snaps from deep within the hood, low and harsh and achingly familiar, and not one Jowan had ever expected to hear again. It startles him enough that he just stands there, pelted with icy rain from the open door, until his visitor utters a quiet snort. “You look like you've seen a ghost, man. The door?”

He shakes himself like a wet dog, throwing off the shock, and fights against the wind to get the door closed and re-engage the locks before turning to face the cloaked figure, little more than a patch of shadow against the deeper darkness of the lightless shop. “Amell? What are you doing here?”

The cloaked figure's weight shifts, and his mind fills in the familiar details – shifting from foot to foot, lips pursed in irritation at being caught in a situation where she needs to explain herself, arms crossed in a defensive bulwark. “I need your help. You have a workroom?”

He nods once. “Back here-- Blast it!” This time, it's his toe that catches the cabinet, sending a spike of pain shooting halfway up his leg. Amell mutters something under her breath, and a pale, strange light blooms in the lanterns along the wall, blue-white and whispering. He gives the lights an appreciative look, then continues on through the cramped shop to the slightly more spacious workroom. “You'll have to teach me that.”

“Maybe,” Amell says. “But my favour first. You already owe me one. Or several.”

Jowan winces slightly at that. It's true, of course, but he doesn't like to think back on those days, on the reason he owes her his life twice over. Instead of looking at her, he busies himself tidying his workbench. “What do you need?”

Something hits the workbench next to his hand with a low thump. A book, old and tattered and bound in leather that's surprisingly soft given its apparent age and ill treatment. Puzzled, he picks it up and flips through it, dread dawning as he notes the sigils scribed on the page. He wheels towards Amell, eyes wide. “This is...”

“Blood magic,” she finishes, not bothering to soften it.

“But _why_?”

She lifts her hands to push back her hood, and his back slams against the workbench as he attempts on instinct to retreat from the parchment-pale face, lips mottled black and grey, hair clinging in patches to scalp peppered with oozing sores. She regards him levelly, one eye gleaming feverish green, the other milky white. _The dead of Redcliffe looked healthier,_ he thinks fleetingly.

“All Grey Wardens are on borrowed time,” she says. “Someone's just dumped the rest of mine out of the hourglass.”

“I haven't used blood magic in years,” he protests. “And I've never done anything like this.”

“You opened a portal to the Fade that I could walk through to beat a demon into submission,” Amell replies. “Even a little rusty, you should be able to manage this spell.”

“And why can't you do it? Do you really think your hands will be clean if you're not the one to actually cast the spell?”

Her smile is nauseating, showing bloodied teeth, as though she'd just been feeding on raw meat. “No,” she says. “But the spell will be horrifically painful for the target, and I think it would be better for everyone if I _don't_ lose control and risk infecting everyone for leagues with the Taint. Don't you?”

Try though he might, Jowan can't really think of an argument for that.

* * *

It takes him a week to go over the notes in full, consulting both Amell and his older resources, books he knows he ought to have burnt as the last step towards transforming himself into the respectable apothecary he pretends to be, but has been unable to part with. It takes another two to collect the necessary ingredients, and each day Amell grows a little more wasted, a little more corpselike. The last of her hair falls away in bloody clumps, and her fingertips turn black and reeking. She herself supplies the blood, in the form of a sailor who had been foolish enough to strike a tavern maid in her presence – a sop to what's left of her conscience, Jowan knows, and the fact that she's still strong enough to overpower a seasoned brawler in her condition is more than a little unnerving.

He mixes blood and ash and powdered bone with lyrium, and paints it on her in alien designs he only half understands while she lies on his workbench, the room lit only with those strange, whispering lights. Her skin feels strangely spongy, giving at his touch as though the flesh beneath has begun to disintegrate, and her bones are far too prominent. When he pierces those designs in the dedicated locations with a knife, oh-so-careful so that he doesn't go too deep, doesn't rupture something she needs to live, the blood that wells up is nearly the same colour as the ink, and stinks of a corpse left five days beneath the summer sun. The corrupted blood slithers over her skin, not pooling where it should, but instead following the lines of ink. He stretches his hands out over her, and reaches for the magic that springs all too eager to his grasp. The lights flicker, and the strange whispering grows louder, almost intelligible now, almost familiar. The blood slithers over the last of the designs on Amell's skin, and they begin to burn like embers, dull red. She shudders beneath his hands, limbs gone rigid, and makes a guttural sound in the back of her throat like she's trying not to scream. Power pours through him, and beads of sweat stand out on his forehead, rolling down his face to sting his eyes and tickle his nose, and the sigils on Amell's flesh burn brighter still, red to orange, then white. Tendrils of blood wind around her, stretch up to wind around his hands, float free of her body like grasping anemones, rotted black slowly clearing to burgundy, then scarlet. She thrashes beneath him, back arching, bucking as though fighting against those bloody tendrils. A scream tears from her throat, raw and anguished and going on and on and on. The ghostly lights howl with her, and his head rings like a tolling bell.

His vision hazes scarlet, and her spine bows into a near-perfect semicircle. There's a noise like wet cloth tearing, and her skin splits apart along the designs he'd traced, spikes of ivory ripping through her skin. Her hands break free of the bloody tendrils, and she grasps at the walls on either side, forearms twisting and lengthening, fingers growing new joints and bones pushing through the tips, sharp and curved as a griffon's talons.

Her scream dies. The lights die. The workroom plunges into darkness as the last of the power Jowan channels rips through him, leaving him hollow. His legs buckle, and he collapses into a damp pool reeking of copper, his ragged breathing the only sound breaching a silence that seems far too immense for such a humble space to contain.

Several moments pass, and something scrapes above him, then approaches with a clicking step that reminds him of a dog's paws on stone, hard nails as point of contact. There is a sense of presence looming directly above him, and then four six-jointed fingers and a too-long thumb wrap around his chin, pulling his head up. The face that peers down at him is pale, skin stretched over protrusions on either side of the head that remind him of nothing so much as a fish's fins. They're oddly delicate, almost beautiful, and he gasps out a jagged, desperate laugh at the thought. The head tilts slightly, eyes narrowing, and the movement is familiar enough that even distorted as it is, he can't help but pick out familiar features. Nose, jawline, eyes now both burning green and strangely glittering in the dark. It's worse, somehow, than if he'd been unable to make out anything of his old friend at all.

"Yes," she says, and the voice reverberates in his head like a bell, sending strange vibrations shuddering through his entire body. It's oddly, horribly pleasant. "Yes, this will do." She strokes one talon along his cheek, not even having to release her grip to do so. His skin burns, as though something horribly acidic is mingling with the blood from the wound left behind. "Rest," she says, and suddenly he finds his eyelids leaden. He blinks, forcing them open again, struggling against the compulsion, but the power of her voice and the exhaustion of the spell tug him inexorably down into oblivion. "Rest," he hears her repeat as his consciousness dissolves. "We'll need your strength to purify my brothers and sisters soon."


End file.
